The Day the Earth Stood Still

[ghost of miles]

Anybody else around these parts a fan of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, the 1951 sci-fi a-man-and-his-robot movie? I first saw this when I was a kid and am thinking about picking up the DVD. I really love the D.C. Cold-War-era setting as well as the religious symbolism and the political themes... and who could ever forget this guy?

[ralphie_boy]

That's definitiely one of my favorites! Here's a few others:

Invasion of The Body Snatchers

The Thing

This Island Earth

Forbidden Planet

Them

Invaders from Mars

The Day of the Triffids

[Guest Mnytime]

That's definitiely one of my favorites! Here's a few others:

Invasion of The Body Snatchers

The Thing

This Island Earth

Forbidden Planet

Them

Invaders from Mars

The Day of the Triffids

All classics IMHO!

[kinuta]

Does the dvd have any added attractions ? Agree this film has withstood the test of time, as, of course , has ' Body Snatchers'.

[ghost of miles]

Kinuta, I'm not sure that it does, but I'm hoping to pick it up tomorrow when I go up to Indianapolis. I'll let you know if anything's been added.

BTW, I, too, loved "Them," another 50's classic that I first encountered as a child on a local Indy station's weekend late-night horror/sci-fi movie feature. Definite Cold War themes in that one, too, IMO.

[ghost of miles]

Found this pic while I was searching for something else in the NY Times American experience archive:

On another note, this was the first time I had to use the "any date" option in the search function when I went to re-locate a topic for which I was looking... yikes!

[PHILLYQ]

What about 'Attack of the Crabmonsters" or 'The Crawling Eye'?

[Shawn]

Great film, one that seems to get better as the years go by. There aren't a whole lot of films that truly deserve the word "timeless" but this is one of them. One of the most literate and resonant sci-fi films of the 50's.

Although not as important but still highly entertaining.

20 Million Miles To Earth (special effects are still stunning)

Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers

The Quatermass Xperiment

Quatermass 2

The War Of The Worlds

Village Of The Damned (the original)

[Jazzmoose]

Does the DVD have any extras? Ahem...let's walk over to the movie shelf and see...

Audio commentary by director Robert Wise and Nicolas Meyer.

70 minute documentary about the making of the movie.

A newsreel from 1951 (about the movie? Damned if I remember...)

More stuff, but the commentary and the doc. are the main items.

[mgraham333]

I'll chime in for "The Day The Earth Stood Still" and "THEM"

Both are excellent films and their respective DVDs are nicely done.

[garthsj]

We study THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL in some detail in my Social Aspects of Film Class.

Wanna play a game ....

1. What name does the Michael Rennie character assume when he comes to Earth?

2. What is his mission on Earth?

3. What happens to him on Earth?

4. Describe in detail his death?

Hmmmmmmmmm .. now where did I read all this before?

I will follow this up when I return from Singapore with the details of a teriffic interview I once had with Robert Wise about his take on his directorial debut in this film ...

[BruceH]

Ghost, the DVD is well worth getting. I finally picked it up last year. The mini-documentary is the nicest extra, for me.

garthsj,

1) Mr. Carpenter (because that name appeared on the dry-cleaning ticket on the clothes he swiped from the hospital.)

2)To warn us about the "non-aggression" clause in the interstellar polity he belongs to. If we go into space in a "threatening" way we'll be automatically blown to smithereens by Gort's colleagues. However, we are free to join their (ahem) federation and live in peace.

3) He is shot in the arm moments after leaving his spaceship. Then he's confined to Walter Reed Hospital; he slips out and poses as a human, taking lodging a boarding house. And so on....

4) He's shot by pursuing army troops, dies, his body is brought back to the ship by Gort (a weak point in the script) and he is revived by advanced medical machinery.

Yes, the Christ parallels are obvious enough, but they can just as easily be ignored.

When I watched this movie on TV back in elementary school, I got the impression that Michael Rennie must be some big star. But no; while he was in other things, this must be by far his best-remembered role.

How about that music by my man Bernard Herrmann? There's never been a better SF film score, IMHO.

"How old would you say he is?"

"Oh, 35, 38..."

"He's 78. Says their medicine is that much more advanced than ours."

[RDK]

Add to the list "Godzilla," *especially* the uncut Japanese version...

[Dave James]

The Day the Earth Stood Still is my favorite sci-fi movie from the '50's or for that matter, any other era. As to the DVD. as others have pointed out , it's chock full of interesting extras, especially the Robert Wise commentary. Don't forget this was the first time most people had ever heard that weirdest of instruments, the theramin. Made for a weird but appropriate soundtrack.

In second place for me is Forbidden Planet. Like TDTESS, it's head and shoulders above the rest because of the quality of the story, the quality of the cast and the intelligence of its script. It's also fun to see Leslie Neilson when he was still a serious actor. And Ann Francis isn't hard to look at either. Pretty good special effects considering the era.

Another of my favorites, and one I finally found on DVD just this weekend is Fiend Without a Face starring Marshall Thompson. About as low budget and cheesy as you can get, but it works. I'll never forget being freaked out as a kid by the creatures once they appeared towards the end of the movie. Brains and spinal cords moving around like inch worms. My Lordy me.

Up over and out.

[ghost of miles]

I did end up buying the DVD, Bruce. My mom picked it up for me at the Indianapolis downtown Borders--when the clerk handed it to her, he said, "Klaatu barada nikto." Later that day she was on the phone with Scott Newman, her former boss at the prosecutor's office, and she happened to mention the errand to him. "Ah," he said. "Klaatu barada nikto." Damn, it's truly a universal saying now!

I also like the newsreel on the DVD--it's a heated Red-scare account of the Soviets behaving badly at a peace conference. Gives you a real sense of what the climate was like when the movie came out.

Yeah, the theremin score is great! Re: THEM, it's another fave of mine from this era (need to get it on DVD as well); in fact, the sound of the cicadas this summer reminds me of THEM all the time!

Edited June 1, 2004 by ghost of miles

[Shawn]

Of course Army Of Darkness helped re-cement Klaatu barada nikto into our minds, those were the "magic words" Ash was supposed to recite before removing the Necronomicon from it's cradle.

[BruceH]

Add to the list "Godzilla," *especially* the uncut Japanese version...

I must say YES to that! I like the score to that one as well.

Dave---I agree that Forbidden Planet is the only other sf film from the 50's that stands out from the crowd. For decades it was my second favorite behind only Day The Earth Stood Still. But time hasn't been as kind to Forbidden Planet. I still have a lot of affection for it, but I'd have to say that it doesn't hold up as well.

[ghost of miles]

Let us not forget the great "Beatles reunion" hoax of the late 1970s involving the rock group Klaatu... oh my God, weren't they Canadian?! I guess they were the poor man's ELO...

[BruceH]

Barenga!

[Dave James]

Isn't the Raymond Burr-less Japanese version of Godzilla scheduled for release on DVD sometime soon? Seems to me I recall reading that fairly recently.

Bruce - Visually, parts of Forbidden Planet don't hold up very well, but I think the story still does. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Morbius takes Commander Adams and Dr. Ostrow for a tour of the Krell "complex"...when they're walking across that bridge and the camera pans up and down and reveals a giant atomic power generation grid for as far as the eye can see...and further. It's designed to make you feel small both physically and intellectually and it works to a tee. I also like the scene when the monsters from the Id are trying to penetrate the ship's electronic defense perimeter and you see the monster outlined by the eminations of the ship's ray gun.

In spite of its not having the timeless legs of a TDTESS, it's still firmly ensconsed among my all time faves.

Up over and out.

[mgraham333]

Of course Army Of Darkness helped re-cement Klaatu barada nikto into our minds, those were the "magic words" Ash was supposed to recite before removing the Necronomicon from it's cradle.

Another homage to TDTESS came from Return of the Jedi in the form of three action figures, named, Klaatu, Barada, and Nikto.

[BruceH]

Bruce - Visually, parts of Forbidden Planet don't hold up very well, but I think the story still does. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Morbius takes Commander Adams and Dr. Ostrow for a tour of the Krell "complex"...when they're walking across that bridge and the camera pans up and down and reveals a giant atomic power generation grid for as far as the eye can see...and further. It's designed to make you feel small both physically and intellectually and it works to a tee. I also like the scene when the monsters from the Id are trying to penetrate the ship's electronic defense perimeter and you see the monster outlined by the eminations of the ship's ray gun.

In spite of its not having the timeless legs of a TDTESS, it's still firmly ensconsed among my all time faves.

I can very much dig it! Actually, the tour of the Krell complex is still one of my favorite parts of Forbidden Planet. I was thinking more of the part where the cook (Earl Holliman) get Robbie to synthesize hundreds of bottles of whiskey for him; it's supposed to be funny, but it's just a drag. And the romance between the Captain and Altaira is pretty lame too. This is all stuff that I plain just didn't notice as a kid; it's like my mind just edited them out. Really, when you're 10 or 11 and watch a movie on TV, there might be some parts you don't understand too well or are just sort of boring and they just don't REGISTER. You just don't remember them later. When I saw FB on the big screen at a repertory cinema at about the age of 28, the above sections seemed almost new to me---the stuff I remembered was all about the Krell and the action scenes.

Still one of my favorites. If Hollywood could make a science fiction movie this good nowadays, I'd be very surprised, and I'd go see it three times. I'm not holding my breath though.

[Shawn]

I personally think most of the effects in Forbidden Planet hold up pretty well. The best segements have already been mentioned, but I also really like the effect where the captain kills the tiger that's getting ready to pounce on the girl...it kind of flames out and then turns to vapor...always liked that effect.

Still a very cool movie...

Anybody else here a fan of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms?

That's cool if the original Godzilla movie get reissued in it's "Burr-less" form. In the American version it's just another monster movie...but in the original version it's a pretty powerful anti-war film. I also never liked the way they edited together Godzilla's attack on Tokyo in the U.S. version, they spliced it together, in the original version it's two different attacks...it creates more tension that way.

[Jazzmoose]

Let us not forget the great "Beatles reunion" hoax of the late 1970s involving the rock group Klaatu... oh my God, weren't they Canadian?! I guess they were the poor man's ELO...

I had hopes that no one else remembered this silliness...

[tooter]

As a long-time fan of science fiction (books), I've always thought the genre uncomfortable in movies because it's so much an imagination thing. That feeling of venturing into the unknown just isn't there in most movies. Except "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and to a lesser extent "Forbidden Planet".